


Tensile

by VesperRegina



Category: Galileo (TV Japan)
Genre: 30kisses, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, my id let me show you it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 07:44:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2016738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperRegina/pseuds/VesperRegina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You realize it's something more than that to me?  That your actions have consequences?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There is no plot to this story; it's just three vignettes loosely connected by thematic elements, and my desire to write smut sandwiched by hurt/comfort. The themes, if you're curious, are hair and water; shattering and being reformed. It's also fix-it fic, because Galileo XX expected us to believe that Yukawa wouldn't notice how Utsumi's work was affecting her, and considering that he's far more observant than that, I decided to write one possible answer to that. Fill for 30Kisses prompt #29, "the sound of waves."

The clock on the wall is ticking, loud against the silence, but it has long ago subsumed itself into Yukawa's unconscious awareness. He has his hand pressed to his face, absorbed in words bright on his laptop's screen, and all stray, regular sounds are so much background hum, a music as common and quiet as the sound of blood in his ears or breath in his mouth. A shuffle-clang on the metal steps of the stairway down into the lab is as startling as a thunderclap, pulling his entrenched attention out, raising his head into a wary acknowledgment that only a few would dare interrupt him.

Utsumi has her chin tucked down, a hand extended, feeling her way. Yukawa can see her wince as her feet hit the stairs, her eyes pinching shut. She lists to one side, imperceptible under other circumstances, but very noticeable to Yukawa, and worrisome, as is the faint pop of her swallowing.

He asks, "Migraine?"

She nods, walking almost blind to the table. Her breath sounds more like a sob when she lays her head on the table. She says, as he approaches, cautious and silent, "Make it stop." It is woefully child-like, small and hopeless.

His shoulders drop. His lips close tight. His office is no fit place to recover from something like this. He says, "I can't do that; it's beyond my ability. Have you taken anything?"

She shakes her head. Yukawa frowns, but leaves Utsumi there, still and mute. It will do no good, searching for pain medication, but he does it anyway. If her migraine is this far gone, only sleep and time will truly help, but he gives the bottle of pills he finds a gentle shake, nods when it rattles, proving it's not empty. He fills a cup with water, listening to the silence of Utsumi in pain.

Her skin has gone sallow around her mouth, and he stands for a moment noting how it deepens the shadows around her eyes. She senses him; opens her eyes, slitted and closing and opening with an unnatural slowness. He holds the water to her, and she sits up, taking it. He opens the bottle of pills, measures out the correct dosage, plus one more, and holds her hand in his, placing them in her palm. Clammy skin is under his, and he takes a breath, feeling his nostrils flare. Utsumi swallows the pills, with only a little of the water. She pushes it away as she lies down again, and Yukawa picks it up, and stares down into it, before taking it to the sink, and smashing it down, hard enough to slosh inside, but not enough to slop out. She should drink more, he thinks. Take care of herself better. Yukawa takes a breath, pinches his lips together, and rejects the irrational wave of resentment that sweeps over him, recognizing that it is toward the debilitation that they have no control over. If she could, she'd cut out the root of it, but she can't. She does take care of herself, and she's safe at the moment, and she came to him. He empties the water, sets it down inside the sink, the clink of metal against metal gentle and soft, deliberate choice to reject all ill will.

He returns to Utsumi, stands behind her for a moment, knowing what should be done, but strangely reluctant to bother her more. He puts his hand on her shoulder, shifts his fingers as he feels the warmth of her, so that they stray under the gathered hair at the nape of her neck, and says, "Utsumi, come; you should lie down somewhere more comfortable."

He can feel her shoulder shift under his hand, as light as his touch is, as she breathes through her nose, labored. Seconds tick by... the sound of the rayed clock on the wall filling in the gaps of silence between her breaths. She rouses herself before too long, her eyes still shut, opening them only when she puts her feet on the floor.

One of her hands finds his sleeve, grabs the cloth there for a moment, before he takes it in his own. Yukawa guides her toward the section that has a couch and low table. "How is your sight?" he asks.

She lies down on her right side, but with her feet on the floor, still holding his hand. An open file is under her head, so he slides it out, placing it aside, and sits down on the table across from her. Utsumi doesn't try to make herself more comfortable. She says, "Not in the car, but before I came in -- blind spot, here." She lets go of his hand, to touch her right eye, with her fingertips. Her hand stays, covering the bridge of her nose, across her closed eyes.

He leans forward, preparing to stand, but she opens her eyes and says, "Can you stay, please?" She swallows and shuts her eyes, not waiting for answer. Yukawa closes his hands on the side of the table, feeling the edges cut into his palms, before moving himself to the space beside her. Utsumi raises herself enough to move closer, to put her head in his lap.

He says, "You should have gone home."

"There's no one to take care of me at home."

She can't see his face, nor the flash of pain that goes over it, the pinched features and closed eyes. It's not worth the telling, how much this simple trust has wedged itself into him, how she doesn't know that this fracturing of her health hurts him as well. He turns himself in his seat, settling into the side of the couch, and Utsumi doesn't move, but that wasn't his intention.

Her hair has fallen across her eyes, and he moves it away, strokes his fingers over her temple, traces her hairline, down past her eyebrow, over her ear. Her hair catches on his fingernails, doesn't give because it's still gathered at the base of her neck. Utsumi breathes, still harder than it should be, and the tension in her mouth is not unlike anger. He returns to the crown of her head, stroking there, down, back up, down, as though she were a cat.

"You can take it out," she murmurs, slurred and almost gone into sleep.

He undoes the elastic fiber-wrapped ring around her hair, not pulling it off, but uncoiling it, until he's able to slip it off without pulling at her hair. He says, "Give me your hand."

She lifts it up and he stretches the band, putting it over her fingers and settling around her wrist. Her fingers tangle for a moment in his own. It's thanks, non-verbal, clear.

He slips his fingers over the surface of her hair, light touches, with no pattern. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, a low moan, and turns her head, hiding her face. She doesn't cry, though sometimes he's seen water under her eyelashes, and he watches her for a long time, focus narrowed to her responses. Her only movements are minimal, stifled... she is rigid, straining unconsciously. The skin at her temples chills his fingertips. He'll never be used to it, or how she seems to ignore what anyone else would do -- seek medical help. She has her reasons, has her faith that time will stop the headaches, that the oppressive nature of her work will ease.

He passes his right hand over her face, his thumb tracing over her eyebrow, fingertips curving past her ear, and away. Her breathing is easier, but close as she is to sleep, she's not fallen into the deep of it yet. She's heavy, but not a dead weight.

Time coils around them, a cocoon. She'd tell him to stop worrying, because it always goes away, and she's fine. He continues to pass his hand over her skin, her hair, and that soon recedes to the background of his awareness, lost in contemplation of the review of his reading. By the time he has taken notice of where his hands have gone, his left has curved itself close to her scalp, tangled into the warmth of her hair, possessive, and he has her hand under his right; it is close to her face, shallow breath hot against his skin.

She doesn't make a sound when he slips out, settles her, alone, on the couch. She'll wake up groggy, but the pain will be gone.

He sits on the round table, folding inward, elbows digging into his legs, and hands before his mouth, and lets his despair rule his features. She can't see it; she can't dig at him, can't notice that he cares. She would resent it, as much as he resents the imposition of her presence, unjust and distorted as that thought is, protective measures against revelation. He sits and watches, hands that were in her hair at his mouth. He breathes the smell of her in -- shampoo and skin; sweat and artificial fragrance -- sweet coconut mingled with the tang of uncut roses.


	2. Chapter 2

He breathes deep of the coolness of her damp loose hair, letting his eyes close, lost in the soft dark around him, the ebb and flow of sensation. Her breath warms him, her mouth fitting soft against his.

"Are you here with me?" she asks, and dimness reveals her meaning more clearly than if they were sitting across from each other, polite and contained. Her thumb traces the line of his jaw, vies for his focus against the concern in her voice.

She is pragmatic with her choice of words, when he can't find his... this is a language of primality, constant redefinition of permissions, of finding the encouragement and withdrawal of her body, of his body's answering and forgiving. There is no shying away of language when she broaches the subject.

He's never told her, the frame of mind needed to involve himself in this, only lets his body speak for him. Love-making is messy, overwhelming, requiring a divorcing of the higher function of thinking... he has to forget to chase the odd assortment of thoughts that intrude, or he'll not give as he's expected.

To give. That is what he understands and prefers to perform, and what comes naturally. To love through action, to care for another with no words, to whisper wanting through his fingertips to the soft skin of her... he puts his thinking away, lets action rule, and listens to sighs, to the moans she makes as she strains her quivering eager body against his, curves back, falls forward, creates tension and exquisite agony that wants to shatter, but holds. 

Her voice whispers gentle accusations, and he listens; he's too quiet, being, even in this, as she says, always in control, thinking too much. Her voice is like water in cracks of ancient stone, flowing inexorable. The bones of her wrists press into the bones of his shoulders, biting pressure, but she carries the weight of herself away too soon, shifts down, presses herself to him, and then away, and he would follow her, but this is where she has placed him, with purpose.

All of this has meaning to her. He's not ignorant of that. It's an act fraught with significance upon significance, the physical a shorthand for the emotional, a palimpsest written in now familiar tracks.

His mouth to her skin would draw noises he hears nowhere else, caught in the wild of her throat, hers alone, and only because of him, and he cannot stay uninvolved, not with that reward, and though she combs her hands through his hair, and scratches short nails across his back, as he indulges the need to do more for her than she intends for him... she doesn't know that it is her response he can't get enough of, the thrumming of her heartbeat, and the arching of her body against his, the way every part of her is in this, is present and real, even in how her legs twine themselves with his. But she slips away from his hands, again, and the covers rustle under her. It shoves him out of the moment, and he falls back, seeks centering, the colored darkness of the inside of his eyelids, and a stolen deep breath. She settles between his legs, and he stiffens as her hair falls across his middle, flipped deliberately, no doubt, but still a shock unexpected.

"Is this all right?" she asks, her voice tentative, but her hands roam, confident and purposeful, up, down, as though she's attempting to convince, maybe not him, but herself, that all will be well. 

"Yes," he answers, "please continue."

"Good."

She kisses his hip, and his gut tightens, anticipation and desire warring with a deeper instinct of preservation. She moves again, bending close.

Her hands spread across the planes of his stomach, his chest, moving her hair in their wake, drifts down to his legs, the interstitial spaces of joints, caresses there, and he feels her warm breath and small fingertips holding him. She says, "You can touch my head," before she takes him in her mouth, the points of her teeth grazing with gentleness. He forgets to breathe, until pressure builds in his lungs, and everything else is swallowed up in darkness, remote and muted. Her thumb rubs over the bone of his hip, and the bed underneath gives under her attempts to get comfortable.

She hums greedy appreciation -- sound is a wavelength, sound is the sea building and crashing, sound is.... She swirls her tongue, and gains what she wants: him at her mercy, drowning in sensation, thought relegated to burning necessity. Yet, even in the maelstrom, despite her invitation, he keeps his hands away from her. Despite the quick build and overload, despite the grand world of only her, her fingers and mouth, the giving of his trust, being pulled out of himself by her freely given worship -- vibration scrambling through, demolishing, into some vibrant microcosm -- despite all, he knows better than to let base instinct overrule into force.

And still, her hands are there to put him together, holding him in place, keeping him at the edge, moving in slick pressure, and the roaring in his ears subsides, leaving him to hear her cough, a small gagging sound, followed by a huff of laughter. He reaches for her, touching her shoulder. She says, "Don't worry about me."

He pushes her hand away; even that careful touch is too much all at once, too much to keep feeling.

"It's in my hair," she says, rue running through, but self-directed. "I just washed it."

"Your idea," he says, and sits up, finds her face with his hands, her cheeks burning under his palms, free to touch, to thank, to draw her to him. She holds his arm with one hand, accepts his kiss with closed lips, but only for a moment, leaving him to feel the soft curve of her cheek beneath his lips. She drops her head on his shoulder and again she coughs.

"My mouth is full of the taste of chlorine," she says, breathless. "I want to get clean."

The smell hangs in the air, salty and cloying, and he's inclined to agree. He nods, confident she'll feel it. 

Her hand finds his, tangles in, and pulls, as she shifts backward, her presence taking something with it, something intangible, but warm. He's stopped questioning what it is. "Come on. You could wash my hair." 

"I'd like that."

"Thought so."


	3. Chapter 3

"You enjoy this, don't you?" Her voice is resentful, but she shivers, as his thumb caresses her ear, on the outer curve. He breathes in the sweetness of her shampoo, and pushes her hair up from the nape of her neck, burying his fingers deep in it, and soothing circles into her scalp. Her hair is thick with water and lather, heavy and warm. It foams up between his fingers, white and clinging, when he removes them. Utsumi exhales, a quiet caving of her shoulders, though the muscles of her back retain a peculiar rigidity, even as her head falls forward. The answer to her question is an unqualified yes, but the apprehension that is coiled tight in the curve of her neck under his palms leads him to tease her, just a little. "I thought I was helping," he remarks, arch and cool, the tone of voice most useful to elicit an unfavorable reaction from her. He moves his thumbs up the hollow in her neck above her spine, fingers up into her hair, gathering it close into a pile, deriving a simple pleasure in having the arrangement of it be his choice.

True to form, her voice grows sullen, but it hitches as he molds one of his palms to the curve of her neck, fingers under her chin. "I told you I could do th -- do this myself."

"You could."

"Don't say it like you're granting me something." She turns out of his reach, sloshing water as she goes, forcing him to remove his hand. She's cautious, nevertheless, to keep her arm above the water, resting it on her knees; plastic rustles as she pulls away. The downward solemnity of her mouth warns him that she's close to snapping at him. "Do you even know how embarrassing this is or do you not care?"

"I don't care." He wipes suds and water away from above her eyes, and smiles. "You enjoy it, too." 

A flicker passes over her face, like a cold snap that leaves frost overnight, and cracks through water, insidious. It makes itself known in the lift of her eyebrows, and the set of her jaw, but it's too late to do anything but recognize it. She says, "I wish I hadn't broken my wrist."

It slashes through his fun, as she means it to, and he stops caressing her face. Whatever she sees in his is enough to cause a widening of her eyes. She brings her hand up to put her fingers over his, but he slips his own out. She reaches up, to touch the side of his face, the covered cast around her wrist still heavy, still frustrating, but at least she can still write, still touch, could even wash her hair. A muscle twitches in his cheek; he feels it jump, and it seems fiercer and more noticeable than it probably is.

She says, "I don't -- I don't blame you. It was just a stupid accident and it was stupid of me to bring it up."

"Turn around," he says, and shoves at her back, a tap, really, and she does it, presents her back to him, vulnerable. He says, "I am not angry."

He leans forward, resting his hand on her shoulder, as he pulls the water sprayer loose. He moves his stool closer to the side of her tub, and using just one finger, he tears down the pile of hair. He says, "Now, close your eyes, and lean back."

"You'll get your clothes wet."

"Quiet."

"Fine," she says, and he hears the tension in it, careful control over strong emotion, "but I'm not shutting my eyes."

He looks down, sees her lips held in a tight line, and understands that it is not all anger, but an attempt at stifling tears. He raises his eyebrows and asks, "Isn't it difficult being that stubborn all the time?"

Her eyes flicker, and then all the angry pain washes out of her face, gone in an instant. She says, "Yes, a little."

The temperature of the water takes some adjustment, and Utsumi stays quiet. Yukawa sets to work rinsing the shampoo from her hair. "I do enjoy this," he says, "but not for the reasons I led you to believe." He combs his fingers through, chasing the soap out, the suds rinsing out like foam taken by a wave. Despite his best efforts, it is as she says. The water goes cold when it hits his bare feet, and makes his grey pants as black as her hair.

He places the sprayer back, leaving it on, and says, "Hand me your conditioner."

She reaches forward for the bottle. Her back gleams; water ripples away from her movement.

She tilts her head back as she hands him the bottle, and asks, "What reasons?"

"Do I really need to say?"

"I don't think you want to. It should be obvious, right? It's unjust to not pay for our mistakes."

The conditioner is white, and shimmers as it covers the lines of his palm, thick and cool. He swipes a little of it onto his fingertips, and scrapes it into her hair at her forehead, then smooths it up at the nape of her neck. As often as she wears the elastic hair ties, she'd explained, it was necessary to prevent breakage.

"There is that. But that's not all of it. I like to do this; I already said that. Watching you is a pleasure in itself, as well, so what does it matter if you watch me?" He coils the ends of her hair around his palm, the strand like a sleek black snake, and he spreads the conditioner over it as though it were alive and cherished.

"So you're just taking advantage of a convenient excuse."

"Yes; you caught me. Do you want water in your eyes, or do you need longer to get your fill?" It's an empty threat, but he entertains the thought of it longer than he should, and is well aware that his voice is annoyed, but that his touch is gentle, combing the conditioner through. The air around them is cooling her hair, though the air itself still warm and humid. Her hair feels tangled still, the white film disappearing into her dark hair underneath.

"You give and give and I hardly ever return it."

"Incorrect. Actions and words are not mutually exclusive or valueless, just different ways of conveying the same meaning. How many times have you given me clarity through your words?"

She closes her eyes as he starts to spray the conditioner out of her hair, and he is getting soaked, warm water running down and away, down the drain outside the tub. He takes a deep breath, and combs his free hand again and again through her wet hair, black and weightless under the water, until the slickness of the conditioner is gone.

Utsumi hums and the sound is void of reluctance. He looks at her face, sees her eyes blink open. She says, "You like it because it's comforting to you, right? You realize it's something more than that to me? That your actions have consequences?"

"Meaning?"

"I'd rather show you than tear it to pieces with words."

That's all the warning he's given before she hooks her arm over his neck, pulling him down. The sprayer falls from his hand: water describes a wild arc, before it settles at his feet, but he was already wet, so more doesn't matter. 

He's slow to open his eyes when she releases him, and reluctant to move away from her, but he raises his head to put her in better focus, as she says, "I'm sorry I'm not an easy person to take care of."

He nods, sober-faced, to acknowledge her grave delivery, but it's overtaken by a little mischief, and it colors his tone when he speaks. "Words and action. What did I do to deserve such extravagance?"

Her smile is warm and slow and slight, touching her mouth for only a moment before hiding away in her eyes, an answering fondness. "You tell me," she says, "because I have no idea."


End file.
